Greedy Goblin

Monday, April 16, 2012

Elitism, endgame and my titan

I got lot of negative comments to my titan plans, either on the basis that titans don't matter (probably the alliances have them for vanity purposes), or that no serious alliance would take me anyway as they need experienced pilots with huge killboard. I could write pages how wrong is that, but luckily I don't have to. The Goons are explaining that to Raiden much better than I could. Did I just mention the Goons positively again? I'm not happy about that.

Please read this Goon flier! In this they explicitly say that they take someone with zero game experience into their fleet and give him ships to fly, asking nothing else than fitting into their culture and to prove that by being an active member of the iconic webpage of that culture.

The block candidate of the Goons got 3x more votes on CSM7 than anyone else (his later fate is not important here). They own vast amount of nullsec and taking more. They can even afford to waste lot of ISK and man-hours on completely stupid events. They are indeed powerful alliance. Why? Because they recognized anyone who is ready to fly a tackler frigate or a destroyer hunting tackler frigates is a valuable addition to the fleet. Of course not even close as valuable as an experienced capital pilot but little > zero and little*lot = big.

While the fate (and fit) of the destroyed PL titan (or the jump-i-mean-bridge guy) questions the statement that I would be the worst titan pilot (remember, I have more than half year to learn) but even if it would be true, you really think that in a 1000+ fight a 15-20M EHP ship that does some DPS (even if it's low compared to a "proper" titan) is not a useful addition to a fleet? I can believe that there are groups who say that "we are the elite and no scrub can join us", but they won't last long. They will be crushed by people in Rifters who talk like mentally retarded kids on local. How will that feel to their "elite" e-peen?

By the way I already figured out my titan fit and just as some of my commenters said, I won't listen to more experienced pilots instead:

Note: The shield boosters are there because when attacked, the alliance fleet counter-dropped to handle the trespassers will probably be armor tanked so can't help with tank (besides refit-carrier). Nosferatu is to prevent being neuted and to whore on the killmails.

By the way before you'd starting to daydream about a mining-titan kill I announce 500M bounty for everyone who give me a call so I can jump away. If the info comes early enough that the alliance can plan a counter-drop and exterminate the gank-fleet, your bounty will be 5B+reinbursement for your ganked ship (which you must lose like the others to avoid suspicion). Forming a fleet to gank a titan? Easy as a pie. Forming a fleet where no one would betray you for 5B? Good luck! Obviously I don't pay for intel of lolfleets, just after those who could actually gank.

Of course the mercoxite mining won't fill up my day, my primary activity in an alliance will be economy of course. First I will only be space renter but I'm sure the results will convince them to pass bigger and bigger parts of the gathering and production to my professional corp so they can focus on conquering more and more systems.

Strong economy and as many people in fleets as possible is clearly the way to win this game. Any alliance capable of recognizing it (accepting that it's not "l33t skillz" that bring the wins) will dominate nullsec. I can clearly help with the economy part and bring one more "little" ship to the fleet. And dominating space will clearly show everyone the importance of trade and production.

I won't participate in any small-fleet actions, so I don't have to know any PvP tricks. And what about large fleets? The greatest bonus of a Ragnarok is the signature decrease. Of course to give it, I must be fleet or wing booster. To proceed on this way, we must understand how fleet boosting works. It's about getting bonuses to shield and armor resist and value, repair speed, ship speed, signature, targeting range, sensor strength. The ships are in squads of 10. 5 (or less) squads form a wing. 5 (or less) wings form a fleet. A ship receives boost from the fleet booster, the wing booster of his wing (not from other wing boosters) and the squad booster of his squad. To provide a boost, the booster must have proper skills and warfare link modules fitted. They are high slot items and need specific ships (command ships) or specifically fitted strategic cruisers. These ships are also able to increase the effect of the links of one, race specific group, for example Tengus can increase the effect of siege warfare links. You can also increase the effect of one group via Mindlink implant. Having such special ship to boost 9 others is a waste, so the squad booster only uses implant but no module (or not even that). If you have an offgrid command ship for both fleet and wing booster, you can have all 12 boosts, 6 of them with increased effect.

However titans have their unique, super-strong bonuses that you can't get from normal modules. You can get much weaker version from mindlink implants (for example +15% armor HP vs +37% from Erebus). However by setting a combat-fit titan to fleet booster, you limit your buffs to the one titan-bonus, 3 enhanced bonuses and 2-3 normal bonuses from the wing booster command ship. An armor tanked fleet can use 10 bonuses (3 information, 3 skirmish, 3 armor and the +shield resist as it increases EHP against alpha). With a boost-fit titan on fleet and offgrid command ship on wing, your ships can receive all bonuses, 6 with enhanced effect plus one titan-bonus. In supercap-heavy fleets (with combat titans on wings) you can have two titan bonuses and 7 normal bonuses (3 enhanced).

So this is my plan: a fleet-booster titan. I told you I'm not going to fire a gun in this game (doom is not a gun) and I'm going to fly a titan in epic battles. Also, since flying this ship needs little communication (practically all I have to know when to warp in, warp out, who to shoot with doom and call for reps), I can fly with non-English speaking FC. The relevant skills can be gained to 5 in less than a year (excluding doom).

The unbuffed Ragnarok has 15400m signature, so I can provide 49% signature decrease. Seriously, you wouldn't take this ship as wing booster for the interceptor/interdictor/bomber-wing of your fleet (or as fleet booster for such ships in a multi-fleet battle)? By the way the shield-tanking med slots are there for giving more time to the RR crew to respond if I'm focused as the Ragnarok armor HP is low and if I'm on fleet boost I won't get Erebus buff.

Your small ships are fine, but your capitals have to make compromises in the fit to maintain cap stability? Put your Erebuses as wing boosters and let me boost the fleet with 37% cap recharge rate:

Are you building a shield-tanked wing (or fleet in a multi-fleet armada), to bring ships the enemy wouldn't expect in PvP? +37% shield HP at your service:

Obviously the warfare links in the fits were picked alphabetically from the list, the FC can decide which 7 he wants on my ship, and which 3 shall receive Mindlink bonus. If 8 links are preferred (typically when wing boosters are combat Erebuses), I gladly part from my doom. If 6 are enough, I can bring 1-2M more EHP. For the Levi it would mean 31M. Also obviously I'll use officer modules and not T2, T2 was used on the fits for easy baseline and let everyone see by a blink what the modules are.

You might guessed it, it's a shameless application post, so if you want this titan on your fleet for free of material costs, organize a meeting between me and your FC (you can find me as Gevlon Goblin often online or send a mail). Probably you should brief me about the culture and aims of your alliance before actually bugging your leaders (paying 10M for such lesson, even if at the end I say, "sorry I couldn't fit in here"). I'm learning the jump drive and odd skills first, so I have a month before starting the hull, during this time you can pick which titan you'd prefer, after that I go with Ragna. In the alliance I won't post anything tactically sensitive or even political, they are far from my blog focus anyway, but I uphold the right to post about the culture of the corp/alliance even negatively (for example for participating in Hulkageddon). However I post such posts on the internal forum first to allow reflections and either accept them and ditch the post or include the response to the blog post.

You might think I wouldn't show up in battles or even log to the titan after having it, since flying a titan without guns can't be fun. Well, sure, the only fun in the game is shooting, and providing buffs is just as boring as providing a warp bookmark.

One more thing: since I preach about using scam-free systems instead of trusting people, it would be hypocritical if I'd do a 100B business based on trust. So no matter how much I might find my home with you guys, I'll pay after sitting in the titan. This way no one can be scammed, just griefed (you can shoot the titan after paying, at the cost of not having it in your fleet, I can self-destruct without paying at the cost of not having titan) and it's reasonable to assume that neither of us would waste a titan for lulz. Of course some corps are infamous for doing such things so if you belong to one, figuring out a deal won't be easy, but I guess nothing is impossible.

PS: of course the "don't listen to more experienced pilots" part was irony. Feel free to comment if you could get more Mercoxite with a Ragnarok. Or more fleet boosts. However spare me from the "this titan is OK but a combat titan would be better" comments. I can't drive one due to low skills, no combat experience and zero will to get some. Many people would be much better titan pilots than me. But they can't donate your fleet a titan. Too bad. Moral of the story: learn to trade!

PS2: EFTing titans a lot, I figured out how could the titans be "nerfed" easily: remove their bonus for normal weapons so no one fit them with those and give them "mini-dooms", smaller versions of the doomsday weapon that cycle 1min instead of 10, damage as much as the devs think it's balanced, has the same jump drive disabling as the doom, can only be fired on capitals and they disable each other and the big doom for 4 secs, so you can't alpha them all, they fire one after the other.

EVE Business report: Saturday morning 8.2B (0.1B gifts 3 PLEX behind for second
account, 0.1B spent on Titan project).
Sunday morning 8.8B (0.1B gifts 3 PLEX behind for second
account, 0.1B spent on Titan project).
Monday morning 9.3B (No gifts, I gave all away, 3 PLEX behind for second
account, 0.1B spent on Titan project).
Last Monday my report was "6.07B (0.1B gifts, 3 PLEX behind for second account)", so in the last week I earned 3.3B (14B/month if I flat out here, or with other words, almost a new PLEX every day).

Remember that you can participate in our EVE conversations on the "goblinworks" channel and your UI suggestions are welcomed.

Meh for the mining titan (I really don't see why you would use that instead of a hulk aside from giving everyone the finger).

I do however like your boosting idea. It fits more into the role titans should have imo, and it would be scary having a fleet of capitals with an extra 37% armour/shield/whatever.

I will make one comment though: seeing as you're going to be close to a few hundred billion isk by the time you get your titan, might I suggest getting at least some dead space/officer mods? They wouldn't cost you more than a few billion and you could easily add 50% to your total EHP.

And I'm jealous at the amount of isk you can make trading! Granted I don't have the amount of time to work at it that you do, and I make decent isk, how you make 200mil an hour on a regular basis boggles my mind.

Text fixed to show that the T2 fits are there for simplicity, obviously the live titan will get high meta modules on the relevant points.

If more than one betrayers come for the money, they get equal share of the 0.5/5B. If they think I just make the others up, I offer them to introduce them to each other and let them distribute the money among themselves.

I am out of date and was never an expert, but my understanding was that in the leagues you are aiming for, the Rorqual was the boosting replacement for the Orca. At one time i think it could even stay safely inside the POS shield while doing so.

Since it is EVE, you probably should put a Rorqual pilot in the oven on another toon to dual box with.

Having severity so you can get system upgrades and the Rorqual are ways to help and no sense being a slacker.

From what I've seen, supercaps and Titans don't move when you log out. They stay in place, which is why they'd be at home rather than towards the front-line, no one wants to lose Titans just because they were logged out. The reason they got those 2 Titans were because they were being super secretive in what they were doing.

You may want to include a 'soft cap' (for lack of a better name) on the payout for a fleet betrayal. Otherwise, people will create 'cheap' (1-2 Billion) fleets to 'suicide-betray' on you, making money in the process (Since you would be paying 5B each time per your deal). And yes, a 1 Billion Isk fleet can absolutely pulverize an isolated titan (frankly, I'd bet I could do it with 50 mil of cap-neuting frigs).

Something like "75% of the value of ships betrayed and destroyed, +5% if the associated pilots were then podded; to a maximum of 5 Billion Isk per betrayal". (You don't want to set this at 100%, as the enemy logistics may be more efficient than the market aggregate).

Im not too sure how to deal with the modules dropped by the attackers, since that value is not exactly destroyed. (If your alliance is 'in' on the scam, they could loot the expensive fittings while including them in the 'value destroyed' tally; with fittings sufficiently expensive, that could make even a 75% payout scheme profitable to scam.) Perhaps limit the payout to X% of value destroyed only; with looted modules excluded from the calculation.

Incidentally, such X% of destroyed value payouts may be effective in retaining mercenaries to patrol your territory; should you ever choose to hold some.

Bridge Titans, but not sure why 2...Anyway, can you tell me why you think anyone would bring a Booster Titan? I know it gives more boni, but you need to jump him into an enemyfleet or system.And you wont have a save POS in every fight. Even if you have one... Well you know what happened to the 2 RA Titans... If I jump Titans into a fight i want firepower to kill as many as possible in an as short as possible time and gtfo... ;)

The RA titans were parked in a POS which had access rights based on a password, rather than standings. A PL spy got the password, and the PL fleet was able to fly through the POS shield and bump the titan with nano-machariels and tempests. They knocked the titans away from the protection of the shield, and then destroyed them before RA's fleet could return home and rescue them.

The titans most likely were not afk, as they had recently been used to jump bridge a large RA fleet into the nearby system of HM-XR2, a RA system that was under attack by S2N. Jump bridging is one of a titan's most useful abilities, as it allows them to instantly transport an allied fleet to a cyno several lightyears away. Not only does this let the fleet bypass any obstacles in the intervening systems, but it can place them within 10km of any point in the target system, making it an effective ambush tactic.

As RA already had a significant supercapital presence in the target system, the titans remained in NOL-M9, RA's home system, so that they could quickly bridge reinforcements into the battle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Szh6DgD8Bto

On Titans in general:

I feel the need to warn you that the leading cause of titan lossmails is user error. Survival in 0.0 requires constant vigilance and paranoia, and when you are flying a lumbering 100 billion isk pinata the risks only go up. It is incredibly easy for an inexperienced pilot to place themselves in a situation where death is almost certain, or to fail to realize when they should exercise the better part of valor.

Your spy bounty proposal is flawed, as there are several alliances whose members would gladly forgo a 5 billion isk bounty just to kill a mining titan, and even more who would deliberately abuse the bounty to scam you. Additionally, most alliances practice operational security for major fleet engagements, only the alliance leaders and the Fleet Commander will know the actual target until the moment they jump bridge 200 ships on top of you.

A fleet of 200+ close range dps ships can pump out 100-200k dps. A titan won't last 5 minutes under that kind of abuse, and even remote repping won't help when it's neuted to zero capacitor and the hardeners turn off. If you want to use your titan without losing it, you'll need to travel with a support fleet of supercarriers, sacrificial triage carriers, and enough dps to kill the enemy before they kill you.

Rather than jumping straight into a supercapital, I strongly suggest start at the bottom and work your way up. Talk or bribe your way into an active pvp alliance, spend a few months flying in subcapital fleets and learning the fundamentals of 0.0 warfare. Then buy yourself a capital pilot and practice with a dread or carrier before investing your time and money into a titan.

"knocking out of pos shields" means flying a ship into the pos shields and physically hitting the titan ("bumping") and thereby forcing them out of the pos. This is only possible if you have a spy alt in the corp/alliance that owns the pos (which must be configured for general access) or you must have the pw for the pos.

To prevent such problems capital staging poses should never be configured for general use and the PW should never be available except to those trusted pilots flying the cap ships.

PL is well known for being in possession of a good spy network with a focus on super capital ganks.

BTW: PL has not only an excellent spy network their income from Tech moons make a 5 billion isk "reward" for information rather limited ... when you are dealing with Titans and SC's you have to go higher to get people's attention let alone the information you want to keep yourself alive.

What is "knocking out of POS shield"? - They knew the POS PW, burned with some big and fast ships (aka Machariel) inside and bump the titan out of the POS Shield.- Point, Web and upload hell on him!

Were those titans just parking there doing noting?- Bridge titans.

Anyone knows why weren't they logged out? - Maybe to bridge in more people? Not sure..

I assume a logged out titan is not on grid).-Right, but you dont log out after every bridge... sometimes you need to open a 2nd one for ppl who were to late.

And anyway, if RA was in war, what the hell those titans were doing at home?- You just don't jump titans in every fight! If you bring titans and supers you bring tons of them. And if you bring them a) you wont get a fight or b) they bring more!

PS.: How do you think your booster titan will work? I dont know any FC who would jump in a Titan just for the boni.

Lets say he wants to fight a fleet in a hostile system:- System could be Cynojammed.- There will be no save POS for the titan.- Cant just go on a "save spot", there is none for a titan!- If he brings just 1 Titan it will be dropped by 20+!

Im sorry, but i couldn't resist posting this on /r/evedreddit/ (home of 'dreddit' and therefor 'TEST', the second largest alliance). Mixed results but mostly 'negative'. Have a read here http://www.reddit.com/r/evedreddit/comments/scay2/quick_grab_this_traderindustrialist_who_made_7b/

Knocking out of POS Shield: Carriers and Titans have been known to stick their noses out of the POS shield to blow the snot out of an enemy ship, or to launch fighters, two things they can't do while completely in the POS.

One of the dangers of this act is that an observant enemy will ram the bit you stick out of the shield, in hopes the bump will flip your Mom-ship or Titan completely out of the POS shield.

At which point, the enemy FC will ignore the POS and alpha you into oblivion.

Oh, and anon 09:33 is correct: if you are going to make a Veldnaught or Veld-titan, you will want an Orca or Rorqual alt to provide mining boosts. You can also mine into them, since you will still be cargo deficient.

You can bump titans if you are able to get into the POS shield (knowing the password through spies, or having a spy in offending corporation.) The Titans are slow an cumbersome enough that a good pilot can bump them out to their death.

Logging out with new mechanics in Crucible doesn't work. A good pilot can scan you down within 1 minute, and aggress you... even if you are not at keyboard.

Then, while being 'logged out' you will be killed by the offending fleet.

(This applies to any ship, not just titans... super capitals have a monster signature radius and are scanned down fairly quickly... especially if they are shield tanked.)

Being a 0.0 pilot for over a year... very few engagements will actually get your boosting titan to be an asset, as it would require a defensive nature at a stationary POS that is vulnerable to a 'rape cage'. If you logout, it will be a rude awakening for a login... or the 'safe POS' may get caged before you even warp to it. (you cannot light a cyno inside a POS bubble)

http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/List_of_EVE_Online_structure_terms

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3B12GCT4JY (a station, but you'll get the idea)

You can ram other ships and push them around. Collisions don't do damage, but they do impart momentum. This is best done with a microwarpdrive, as it increases the mass of the ship and therefore the magnitude of the bump.

A POS forcefield can be set up with a password, which allows people to get into the shield. This is mostly used for large coalition POS, as the normal POS shield standings access mechanics only work up to an alliance level. If one has the POS password from some espionage, then one can enter the POS shield and attempt to ram ships out of the invulnerability of the shield and into guns of the waiting fleet.

Someone probably has already told you this, but when buying the titan use Chribba's third party service. Also, you might want to ask Chribba how to properly fit your titan for mining. He has four titans, one from each race.

This "leave the titan home where it's safe" is somehow as dumb to me as it can be.

They are your strongest ships. Why don't you use them for any other purpose than bridging?

The above can only be beaten in stupidity by "- You just don't jump titans in every fight! If you bring titans and supers you bring tons of them. And if you bring them a) you wont get a fight or b) they bring more!". Your purpose is to win the battle. If the enemy flee, you got a win for free. If the enemy can drop more, you already lost and you should field NOTHING just give up the system.

@Gevlon"This "leave the titan home where it's safe" is somehow as dumb to me as it can be.They are your strongest ships. Why don't you use them for any other purpose than bridging?"

Not only strongest, but also extremely (more like insanely) expensive, especially compared to titan combat value, even pre-nerf. While there are some cases when you'll want them to actually fight, in most cases it won't be benefical at all. Titan look cool, hit hard, but it can't do anything against most of the ships out there (while any ship can't possibly score a miss on one), cripple itself for a long period of time by using it's main gun, and therefore is limited to roles of cap-killer, jump-bridge and fat-target that will surely attract attention of everyone, who wants to be not on just any cap killmail, but on a titan one. It's like WoW tanks mass taunt, titan-killer-wannabes can't resist it. Therefore whole titan buisness as it is now is totally broken - it's expensive to have titan fleet, it's unwise to deploy it against non-capital targets and without vast support of subcaps and smaller caps (that can do the same job done by themselves, probably only little longer), and as it's completely useless against such targets (also, smaller ships are cheap to build and therefore cheap to replace).But at the same time titan do have irreplaceble utility, which can be used with acceptable risk and can help your own subcap fleet greatly - thus titans spend they entire time bridging inside the bubble.

You have never been in 0.0 it seams.Who ever said ""- You just don't jump titans in every fight! If you bring titans and supers you bring tons of them. And if you bring them a) you wont get a fight or b) they bring more!"." is right.

"Your purpose is to win the battle. If the enemy flee, you got a win for free."This means your alliance will only grind SoV day after day after day.And in 1-2 Weeks less and less people will join the fleets, because there is nothing as borring as grinding structures.You have to get some fights for you PVP players, else they will get borred and leave sooner or later.

"If the enemy can drop more, you already lost and you should field NOTHING just give up the system."You never know howmany the enemy can drop. Today he brings 10 Supers + 5 Titans and tomorrow a cyno opens and there is 20 Supers and 15 Titans.And the day after this a 3rd party joins them justt for the fun of it and you face a fleet of 60 Supers and 50 Titans.

Maybe you should start with a Ceptor and actualy try out 0.0 and 0.0 fights. So you can see how they realy are and how they are different from what you think they are.

PS.: Titans are not the strongest ships you have. They are just the most expensive ones.

"This "leave the titan home where it's safe" is somehow as dumb to me as it can be.

They are your strongest ships. Why don't you use them for any other purpose than bridging?"

Titans are force multipliers, and a single titan is more valuable jump bridging reinforcements into a fight than actually entering the fight itself.

Imagine a scenario where alliances A and B are fighting over a system. A has 250 Battleships, while B has 150 Battleships plus a titan. All other things being equal, if Team B brings their battleships and titan to the field, they will lose in every way. They will lose the battleships, they will lose the titan, they will lose the system, and they will lose more money.

However, if instead of using the titan in the fight, Team B uses it to bridge their BS fleet in. Team A kills all of Team B's battleships, but loses 100 in the process. Then Team B's dead pilots go back to their home system, grab new ships, and use the titan bridge to instantly return to the fight. At the end of the battle, Team B will have worn down Team A with the superior logistics of the Titan bridge, and even though they lost more ships they will have won the system.

The above scenario is overly simplistic, as most major engagements in eve will involve dozens of capital ships and hundreds of subcaps. When you've got 20 titans, keeping a couple in reserve to jump bridge reinforcements makes even more sense.

Always remember that strategic maneuvering and logistical chains are more important than numbers or fleet tactics in 0.0 warfare.

"The above can only be beaten in stupidity by "- You just don't jump titans in every fight! If you bring titans and supers you bring tons of them. And if you bring them a) you wont get a fight or b) they bring more!". Your purpose is to win the battle. If the enemy flee, you got a win for free. If the enemy can drop more, you already lost and you should field NOTHING just give up the system."

On a tactical level, alliances will often hold some of their forces in reserve at the beginning of a battle to try and trick the enemy into committing to a fight, and then bring in the reserve forces to trap and kill them. Deception and espionage play key roles in EVE pvp.

On a strategic level, the purpose of fighting is not to win the battle, but to win the war, and to survive the peace between wars. It doesn't matter how many battles you lose as long as A) you can replace the losses, and B) you can keep up morale. Titans are harder to replace than an equivalent isk value of Battleships, and losing them hurts morale a lot more.

Fighting a losing battle can tire out your opponents, it can waste their money and resources, it can distract your enemy from a more important strategic objective, it can steal momentum from the enemy and buy you time, it can stimulate your own economy, it can give your pilots something to do on a Saturday night because god knows they probably aren't getting laid.

If an alliance wins battles without fighting, and completely avoids fights that they cannot win, their members will become bored, lazy, and careless. Skilled pilots will abandon the alliance in search of more exciting employment opportunities, leaders will go afk, or RMT the alliance wallet to buy a car. Most major power blocs in EVE collapse due to internal stagnation and drama, not because of losing battles or war related expenses.

All of the major (i.e. technetium holding) 0.0 alliances can sustain virtually unlimited supcapital losses. For example, Goonswarm budgets 10% of their income for subcapital ship reimbursements, and will regularly shrug off the loss of 250 subcapital ships or a dozen dreadnaughts as an expected operating expense. They could easily replace 3000 battleships a month if they had to.

Gevlon - i think you are missing an opportunity. you have shown over the years an ability to gather together quality players and achieve in game goals to you deem worthy.

i think your calling within eve is that of an alliance leader. i'm not sure you have the time or patience though. a great leader gathers around him capable leaders to whom he can delegate the day to day running of things so he can focus on long term strategic goals.

now depending on your vision the stategic goals you pursue my be very different from the current alliances in game.

i find it enlightening to watch how the goons operate. entertaining "circuses" to get the line members logging on regularly. (ice interdiction, burn jita etc).

rewarding Corps with Sov for participation rates in war time to foster competition.

communism as far as assets go. ship replacment etc to let players fight and die for free. (no need for goons to RMT like most nullsec alliances because the SA forum gets $10 up front per member)

Technical details have been explained rather well I think. I will just try to convince you again that you should forget about this business. Right now you are doing a lot of very m&s things - you want to get into the coolest l33test thing straight away in order to pwn and prove points, you have no experience with 0.0 yet you act like you know better than 7 year veterans and so on, you want to greatly skip ahead of the curve (read your Lemonade post again)

If you really want to be in the 0.0 game, you need to start slow. Fly battlecruisers, fly interceptors and scouts, fly dictors, fly logis, fly covert recon. Learn the many tactical mechanics like POS, interdiction, turret tracking, FCing, force projection, alliance logistics and so on. Learn the deep metagame mechanics and strategies - espionage, attrition warfare, blueballs, boredom management, finances, politics and so on. This is all user created content of endless layers of complexity, there is no tankspot video or even written guide, you learn by being there, doing it and failing miserably. If you don't fail you can't learn, it's simple as that. You need to have a natural instictive understanding of all these if you are to succeed.

..I strongly agree with Anti. Gevlon, you understand social behaviors. Why arn't you working on building a corp of dedicated, no frills, tough as nails, keep your Megan fox jokes to yourself, ambitious 0.0 pilots?

You say a Titan is your end game. I say a corp lead by you taking, holding, and shaking up 0.0 is your end game.

I must say, it is refreshing to see you put the same disruptive logic you put towards defeating WoW raids and focus it on EVE.You are right, most people want to play "DPS classes" (pew pew with the big guns), whereas you are thinking about it critically as "Why not just bring buffs to the EVE raid, which boosts the performance of all".

Its impressive to see how quickly you've picked up all the quirks of EVE, which just shows that all it takes is some actual patience & research to quickly get to 80% of the veterans.

Re: Anti's comments about Goons not needing to RMT because of SA's $10 entry fee:"(no need for goons to RMT like most nullsec alliances because the SA forum gets $10 up front per member)"

Both parts of that sentence are true, but they are completely unrelated. The owner of SA has absolutely nothing to do with the leader of Goonswarm, and vice versa. No money from SA membership fees goes to Goonswarm at all.

Goons don't RMT because they generally don't need to- most of their individual members can buy PLEX with ISK relatively easily without it, and their Technetium income funds their alliance-level shenanigans. There are an apparently limitless number of M&S who fall for the Goons' "5b membership fee" scam, lining up to throw ISK at them for what they think is a chance to join.

While I'm at it- joining SA for $10 isn't a free ticket into Goonswarm, either- they check for posting history and require you to be a SA member for a longish time before they'll let you join.